Some nicknames don’t make sense. (Why is “Bill” short for “William?”). But other nicknames fit quite well. Gonorrhea, as it turns out, has a very well-known and very fitting nickname: the clap.
Daytha Lindburg, a physician’s assistant in obstetrics and gynecology at Mowery Clinic in Salina, says the term “the clap” has roots in World War I. Some of the soldiers had gonorrhea during the war, and the doctors had no idea how to cure it. The disease causes severe pain in men, so the doctors knew they had to do something. Their solution, says Lindburg, was to have two men stand on either side of the ailing soldier and literally clap their hands together on his penis in an effort to release the discharge inside.
The remedy sounds horrifying, but Lindburg says a lack of sufficient antibiotics required desperate measures.
“They had no alternative,” she says. “I think that at times, the poor fellows actually felt better afterward.”
So, unfortunately for some men in the early 1900s, “the clap” makes perfect sense.
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